CurseForge Gradle Publish Plugin vs ForgeGradle

CurseForge Gradle Publish Plugin publishes build artifacts to CurseForge from a Gradle build. A publication can specify a CurseForge project ID, main artifact, game versions, display name, release type, changelog, and artifact relationships. It uses the CurseForge Upload API and needs an API token in the plugin’s curseforge extension. The README warns that keeping the token in a version-controlled build script can expose it; user-specific Gradle properties are suggested instead.

For mod projects, the plugin can derive publication details from other tools. With Fabric Loom and a remapJar or jar bundling task, it can create a publication preconfigured for Fabric and the targeted Minecraft version. Its ModDevGradle and NeoGradle integrations can infer NeoForge and Minecraft-version details. When Gradle’s java-base plugin is present, it infers the Java version from the compileJava target.

ForgeGradle is a free Gradle plugin and Minecraft mod development framework used with Forge and FML. Its documentation focuses on setting up a mod development environment, not teaching Java, Groovy or Gradle. Setup requires a Java Development Kit and familiarity with an integrated development environment. The guide provides commands to generate run configurations for Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. Configurations can specify arguments, working directories, task names, environment properties and system properties; Forge supplies client, server, data and gameTestServer run types. Developers can select human-readable mappings and use a reobf task to convert a mod JAR to SRG mappings for production. Dependencies can be sourced from repositories or a local flat directory and wrapped with fg.deobf. An optional Jar-in-Jar system bundles selected dependencies and records metadata during the build. The documentation covers Minecraft versions 1.12 through 1.19, plus 1.19.4. Its default stable and snapshot mappings are typically incomplete and are no longer available as of Minecraft 1.17. The repository identifies the license as LGPL-2.1.